Will Wright: I understand the outrage over the SimCity launch

Will Wright has been giving his view over the near-catastrophic launch of the latest SimCity game.

The SimCity creator and founder of Maxis said that he understood the backlash from gamers over the always-on nature of the game and recognised that there were some legitimate greivances to be had there.

He explained, "I feel bad for the team. I could have predicted - I kind of did predict there'd be a big backlash about the DRM stuff. It's a good game; I enjoy playing it a lot. It was kind of like, 'EA is the evil empire, there was a lot of 'Let's bash EA over it.' That was basically inexcusable, that you charge somebody 60 USD for a game and they can't play it. I can understand the outrage. If I was a consumer buying the game and that happened to me, I'd feel the same."

"I think people care if it doesn't work. If you can't play it on planes, stuff like that... I think there are some very valid concerns about it,” he added on a more general note about always-o internet. “Also there's a perception; I don't expect to play World of Warcraft on the airplane, because my perception is it has to be on the 'Net. Sim City was in this very uncomfortable space, like the uncanny valley, almost; [it was caught] between was it a single player game or was it a multiplayer game?"

EA has just announced The Sims 4 and has made it very clear that it is an offline, single-player game.